I wonder if it uploads your playlist to "the cloud" or their server securely so that you can access it from anywhere (but obviously only you can access it).
Nope. It sounds like you can include your local files in the Spotify desktop client's library (so that you don't have to run both a Spotify and iTunes client), and use that to sync files from your PC to the Spotify player on your iOS/Android device, but the only things you can stream from the cloud are songs on in their database.
If anyone can enlighten me, I was curious as to how exactly Spotify's contracts with record labels, etc. work. I can only assume they get a gigantic sum of $ paid for the rights of the music?
In the case of the US launch, it sounds like the ink is still drying on the deals with the major labels, so I guess only the lawyers know exactly how the contracts work, but the general concept for these services has been that rights-owners get paid-per-listen. Some very tiny amount per-listen, to be sure, but something greater than 0.
This is getting close to the ideal form of music-payment I've been wanting for a decade now: pay artists based on how much we actually *listen* to their music. Instead of paying the same $15 for one album that you listen to once and realize you hate it vs. one that you listen to 1000 times, under this system you pay almost nothing to "sample", and only pay real money for the stuff that you actually get value from.
The only remaining bit is that while the rights-holders are getting paid per-listen, the consumer isn't directly *paying* per-listen. Instead, money is paid to rights-holders out of a pool created from subscription fees and ad revenue, while some (most) users actually pay nothing directly. But that might be a better way to do it anyway, since having to decide every time you play a song "is this going to be worth my $0.0002?" would probably be too much of a mental burden.
Oh, I heard that Spotify will add the option to buy music as legal downloads as well (for the free users who don't want to subscribe). Can anyone confirm this?
Have not heard this, and since AFAIK it's not part of the European service, I'm not sure why it would become part of the US service.
Though as someone who is most interested at the moment in using it as a free service for sampling-then-purchasing, it would make sense for them to offer to sell me downloads directly rather than letting me go somewhere else to buy them. However, I just read that the free service will allow unlimited streaming for the next 6 months in the US, in contrast to the Euro version where you're limited to 20 (or even 10?) hours per month, and it's under the Euro scenario that I envisioned using the free-sampling-then-downloading model. (and of course it's going to be a big money-loser for Spotify for those 6 months because they'll have to pay out a lot to rights-holders while having very little income from paying subscribers, but they're doing it as part of a grow-user-base-first, make-money-later strategy).
but eventually most music will just be bought and downloaded. It's already going in that direction.
Correction: it already *went* in the "bought and downloaded" direction. That's last-generation's old news, which means CDs are now *two* generations old. Now it's going in the "access for streaming" direction (and Spotify is even late to the game there).
Neil
